And for those of you have time for interesting listening, don't forget that Hanny is doing her live interview on astronomy.fm –TheEventHorizon this evening at 19:00 UT (3:00pm EDT). Discussing citizen astronomy research and Galaxy Zoo.

I'm shamelessly posting a shot I took last night (well very early this morning). And really curious to know if anyone else saw it too.

I'd gone out into the garden to watch the ISS pass over at 00.35 and as it was going past, I saw the streaking fiery tale of an object hitting the atmosphere, quite orange and quite wide. I've never seen one quite so dramatic. I'm not sure if it was a meteorite or man made object burning up.

I was South West London. The object was on a heading of about 53 degrees NE. Did anyone else around the UK see it?

It was going pretty fast.

Luckily I had the camera with me so you can see the ISS over London and fireball trail streaking down below it. To give an idea of time and speed, it was a 30 second exposure, so you can see how far the ISS traveled in that time.

And another shameless plug for our photo challenge too, welcome to the new contributors and please do feel to join in if you fancy.

Today saw the landing of the Japanese Hayabusa container which hit the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a fireball over southern Australia.

Credit: JAXAThe Hayabusa mission began in 2003, the Ion driven vehicle was planned to land on asteroid Itokawa, spending three months at the 500m-long potato-shaped object in 2005.

The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, was due to come back to Earth in 2007, but a series of technical problems delayed its return by three years. the JAXA team managed to find solutions to many of the setbacks and although the sample collector malfunctioned, it is hoped that some fragments of dust from the asteroid will have returned with the reentry capsule.It's no mean feat to land on such a small object which orbits the Sun between Earth and Mars and then return to Earth. So whatever the outcome, congratulations are due. Lets hope that the team are able to recover the reentry vehicle intact.Asteroid ItokawaCredit: JAXA

Friday saw the successful launch of the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. The system has been developed by SpaceX after winning a commercial contract with NASA. It is highly efficient so the cost to lift payload is lower than earlier systems. And with the imminent retirement of the Shuttle fleet it is hugely important for ISS resupply and future manned missions.

Hubble Space Telescope's birthdayAs just about everyone here will know it has just been Hubble's birthday. So what better way to celebrate than feature an image from Hubble Zoo. This is one I found earler (Thanks Jo for waking me up)

So, just another reminder, if you haven't already, complete the survey and then take a look at the new Zoo.

And if you want a bit more info about Hubble, it was my OOTD a few Moons ago.

Yesterday marked the safe return of the crew of Apollo 13, 40 years ago. It was amazing that the team managed to improvise from the equipment onboard, a way to get the crew safely home. So I though for those who weren't around at the time and those that were, you like to see more about it here.

And this is a picture of the service module as it was released showing the damaged caused by the explosion in an oxygen cylinder.